


A Red Queen Christmas Special

by Natthefantastic



Series: Red Queen Holiday Specials [2]
Category: Red Queen Series - Victoria Aveyard
Genre: All the RQ Characters except Jon, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Christmas Cookies, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Party, Christmas Tree, F/M, Mistletoe, Secret Santa, Ugly Holiday Sweaters, Underneath the Tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27960344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natthefantastic/pseuds/Natthefantastic
Summary: Welcome back! This holiday season, Nat takes a trip back to the Barrows' domesticated life out on Long Island at their suburban house. Mare and Cal are together, Mare's brothers still hate Cal, and Farley and Ruth Barrow are about to stir up some trouble in the kitchen. Oh, and Maven and Thomas are back from Stanford. You know that nothing spells mischief like Christmastime. Requests are open, so drop a comment about what sort of holiday-related shenanigans you'd like to see. ;)
Relationships: Cameron Cole/Kilorn Warren, Carmadon/Dane Davidson, Diana Farley/Shade Barrow, Elane Haven/Evangeline Samos, Julian Jacos/Sara Skonos, Mare Barrow/Tiberias "Cal" Calore VII, Maven Calore/Thomas
Series: Red Queen Holiday Specials [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2047712
Comments: 19
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

Welcome back! This holiday season, Nat takes a trip back to the Barrows' domesticated life out on Long Island at their suburban house. Mare and Cal are together, Mare's brothers still hate Cal, and Farley and Ruth Barrow are about to stir up some trouble in the kitchen. Oh, and Maven and Thomas are back from Stanford. You know that nothing spells mischief like Christmastime. Requests are open, so drop a comment about what sort of holiday-related shenanigans you'd like to see. ;)


	2. Ugly Christmas Sweaters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that you all are having a nice holiday break thus far! I wanted to publish a little bit of the story tonight, but the bulk of it will be coming out tomorrow and a few days after that. Enjoy, and let me know if you'd like to see anything else. I'm still writing!

Cal put on his most charming grin as he rang the Barrows’ doorbell.

On Christmas Eve of that year, the weather outside was frightful. The makings of a blizzard were on the horizon, already edging on Philly and soon to be overtaking New York City. In biting cold air that made Cal shiver—even under his riding jacket, ugly Christmas sweater, and pounds of muscle—lurked breezes that would become whipping winds and far-off grey clouds. In fact, fresh off his motorcycle that now lingered in the circular driveway, shivering was an understatement for Cal. He had just driven a half-hour from Manhattan. He was freezing.

But otherwise, it seemed to be a perfect Christmas Eve morning. On the lawn of the Barrows’ overtly suburban home, on top of a foot of snow that stretched out to the street, waited Christmas decorations made invisible by the crisp morning sun. While the setup was no match for the houses on  _ The Great Christmas Light Fight _ , the Barrows’ reindeer turned golden at night and the trees of the front yard lit up with red, green, blue, yellow, orange, and purple Christmas lights. It was elegant but simple, the exact sort of thing Missus Barrow had told her sons that she wanted. So a couple of weekends ago, Bree, Tramy, Shade, and Kilorn bought some ladders and lights and got to work.

Though it felt like a lifetime of anticipation passed, Cal knew it was only a matter of two or three seconds before the door flew open. The two men on the other side had been expecting him.

Although they weren’t twins, Bree and Tramy stood across the threshold wearing matching malicious grins and not-so malicious Christmas sweaters. Along with slippers and their checkered pajama bottoms, they wore fleece robes over the sweaters. Cal envied them if only because they weren’t on the verge of freezing to death.

“Cal,” Bree said, leaning against the door jamb. “What’s up?”

He tried to hide his shivers, his pain, but Bree and Tramy saw the slight blush on Cal’s cheeks.

Tramy leaned on the opposite door jamb. Just to stick in his face, he took the two sides of his robe and tied them together with its belt, all while looking his sister’s boyfriend dead in the eyes.

They hadn’t forgotten about the lingerie incident. Cal wished he could forget it.

After a lot of threats from the brothers, Shade included, and laughing from the rest of the living room, let’s just say that Cal spent the evening sleeping on the Barrows’ new sectional sofa. If Mare hadn’t been on top of his lap, telling her brothers that technically, it was her house and that they couldn’t kick Cal out of it, he surely would’ve ended up in a snowbank. Or in a ditch somewhere.

His only consolation was that, somehow, Mister Barrow hadn’t found out about the lingerie, despite his being in the kitchen at the time of its discovery. For at that same moment, Kilorn, saving Cal’s ass, had drawn Mister Barrow’s attention over to the pantry, where they began to have a lengthy discussion regarding coffee blends.

Blinking out of his memories and back into the cold, Cal crossed his arms. “I just drove from Manhattan. It was cold. Can I come inside please?” He wasn’t stupid enough to ask the brothers if he could park his motorcycle in the garage. He’d ask Missus Barrow that.

Bree, as if considering, rocked his head back and forth. “I don’t know Cal. Are you screwing our little sister?”

Well.

It took all of Cal’s being not to react.

If he answered truthfully, Cal supposed that he could indeed come inside. To receive the worst beating of his life. Otherwise, he could be a liar and freeze to death on the Barrows’ front deck.

Being a man, Cal’s mind couldn’t help but drift to what had happened on the stage floor of the Academy last week. Mare could only go to so many “sleepovers” with the Academy girls in Manhattan, and even then, the rest of the family was suspicious of what she was really doing.

Or rather, who.

Thank God, because before Cal was forced to answer, he heard a voice that might as well have been from Heaven. “Bree and Tramy,” Ruth Barrow hollered from somewhere inside of the house. “Did you finish your chores?”

As though confronted by a witch, the brothers paled.

Silence enough confirmation for the woman, she continued. “That’s what I thought. Your father and I let you live here for free, you know, while you two blow your money on custom-made Christmas sweaters and girls you hardly know. Get inside, grab the vacuum and Swiffer, and let that poor boy in. He must be freezing to death.”

<><><>

“That little bitch,” Farley snarled from the driver’s seat of her F-150. 

Four months pregnant, and Shade’s fiancée had lost none of her scary touch.

“The truck will be fine out in the driveway, Diana,” Shade reassured her, even as they watched Cal park his stupid motorcycle in the third and final garage of the Barrow family home. It looked as though Ruth Barrow had even taken her black SUV out in order to make room.

But stress was bad for the baby, as Farley had learned from the mother of five. (She could more-or-less tell that Bree, Tramy, and Mare had been carried during especially stressful times, considering how they turned out.) So the former Scarlet Street Fighter got out of her pickup, slammed the door shut, and let it go like water off a furious duck’s back.

In no time at all, she and Shade were holding hands and halfway up the few stairs that led to the house’s front door. 

In even less time, Missus Barrow was out of it, beeling for her favorite child in-law. Farley beamed right back at her. In between Ruth’s hands existed the ugliest, most revolting sweater Farley had ever seen.

If the sweater stopped with the white yarn, it might have been okay. But it didn’t. The neckline and cuffs were trimmed with green and red garland, and stick-on green and red bows traveled up and down the sleeves. A gigantic red ribbon wider than Farley’s shoulderblades was stuck to the sweater’s back. And then on the front of the sweater, glued on with some sort of fabric letters, read . . .

_ FAV DAUGHTER-IN-LAW _

Shade, having accused his mom many times of preferring Farley to him, rolled his eyes. He had been happy to hear that they bonded on Black Friday, but this was taking it too far. Farley spent more time at the Barrow house than he did, learning all of Missus Barrow’s kitchen tricks and talking for hours about the baby. Meanwhile, Missus Barrow was learning how to be aggressive with her family and take charge. Farley, he supposed, was the only reason Bree and Tramy were finally doing their chores.

“I hope it fits, Diana,” Ruth said, taking a look at Farley’s pregnant stomach. “That grandbaby of mine is growing fast. But the good news is that we’re going to win that ugly-sweater contest. Mine says  _ BEST GRANDMA. _ ” 

If it were anybody other than Ruth Barrow, the woman who treated Farley like a daughter, the former Street Fighter might have rolled her eyes as well. Instead, she only giggled, snatching the sweater away from the future grandmother.


	3. O Christmas Tree . . . Oh Christmas Tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2! I'll post a lil' more tonight. :)

“I forgot how much I hated New York,” Maven muttered to Thomas, kicking the snow from his Converse in the Barrows’ mudroom. The white alcoves were already filled to the brim with coats and boots, and a substantial puddle of dirty water was on the floor. 

Why the hell didn’t they have a rug?

“I told you to bring an actual jacket,” Thomas returned, shucking off his thick navy parka and hanging it next to Cal’s tough-boy leather jacket. “I’ve been telling you all week, actually.”

When it was sixty degrees in San Francisco, Maven hadn’t wanted to bring a jacket to the airport. If he was being honest, now that he lived in California, Maven didn’t own a jacket. Thus, his suitcase was filled with sweatshirts and jeans and one thin windbreaker. No boots or winter jackets. And after all, he’d made it here from JFK. As long as none of the Barrows forced him to shovel their driveway—he wouldn’t put it past them to get free labor out of him on his vacation—Maven would be fine.

Having a good idea of what was going through Maven’s head, Thomas just chuckled as he placed his second boot in the neat row that traveled across the floor.

That laugh erased the exhaustion of his cross-country flight—which had departed from San Francisco at five in the morning—from Maven’s very bones. It reminded him of the great week he and Thomas had spent in Palm Springs the week before, staying with Thomas’s older parents at their new quaint house in the city’s retirement community. Amid cautious sunbathing, golf, staring at palm trees, and other things Maven hadn’t known he liked until he met his boyfriend, Maven had found a new set of parents in Thomas’s mom and dad, who might as well have been his blood.

He was officially on a first-name-basis with both of them, something he knew Cal hadn’t yet accomplished with Mare’s parents. Maven and Thomas’s dad had quickly found worthy opponents in one another when it came to chess, and Thomas’s mother shared Maven’s love of judging reality TV.

“You look so handsome in your ugly sweater, Cal,” a nearby, disembodied voice murmured, drawing Maven from his reverie. 

Both he and Thomas looked towards the hall off from the mudroom, and Maven figured that Mare Barrow and his brother were hiding in the nearby bathroom together. It’s not like Cal had a lot of options with Mare when he came over, considering that Bree and Tramy were usually monitoring his every move. So yes, Maven supposed, it was an impressive feat that they had been able to sneak into a bathroom for a moment of alone time.

Cal’s masculine chuckle filtered through the air a moment later. Whatever Mare’s boyfriend said next was whispered into her ear. 

There was a time when listening to that exchange would’ve struck Maven like a fist to the face, would’ve had him boiling alive in jealousy and ready to tear the world apart. 

Now, he just ignored it, not because he didn’t want to hear it but simply because he wasn’t interested. Instead, Maven kicked off his Converse, letting them stay in the middle of the mudroom when the rest of the shoes were arranged in an orderly line. 

Now, he just ignored it, because he had a boyfriend in front of him that loved him unconditionally, faults and all. Thomas was Maven’s world. Thomas, reading him like a picture book, knew it too. 

Thomas and Maven had met the way that all great romances begin.

In a coffee shop. 

Thomas was a barista of this little shop on one edge of the university. He worked late hours, since he had classes in the morning and afternoon. The fact that they ever said more than a few words to one another was, Maven claimed, Thomas’s fault, considering he royally-screwed up Maven’s coffee order.

In Thomas’s defense, the order had been a bit complicated.

_ Poured, not shaken _ .

_ One sugar in the raw. _

_ No foam. _

_ Three short sprinkles of cinnamon. _

Maven had at first abused the barista for his botched order, but Thomas later returned the favor and told Maven that he should, quote, “chill out.” Then came a caffeine-induced rant from Maven to Thomas about how disgusting university food was and how college parties had the worst alcohol. Maven was no lightweight.

With Thomas’s shift over, Maven began complaining about having to wear sunscreen everywhere, since he was from New York.

Thomas was from San Bernardino. The rest was history.

Top of his high school class, Maven later found out. Captain of the robotics team and the debate team, despite his quiet demeanor. Thomas was also a freshman at Stanford, though he was a year older than Maven, since the younger Calore technically still should’ve been in high school. 

Although Maven had made a few friends in the area already, he wasn’t taking classes until January and spent most of his time studying for medical courses that hadn’t even begun. Thomas, however, introduced him to a plethora of people who understood Maven and the nerdy things that he liked, and in no time at all, Maven had enough friends to make a football team out of.

Not that they were going to do that.

And then there was Thomas. Who understood him, listened to him, talked to him. Told him to take a break from his schoolwork, watch a science-fiction movie with him, and kiss him.

Mare and Cal were still flirting with each other in the bathroom. Every second that they spent in there was another risked of Bree and Tramy flinging open the door to find out whatever was going on.

“Come on,” Maven said a moment later, reaching for his boyfriend’s hand. “I think that Missus Barrow and Farley made gingerbread houses to eat.”

Thomas eyed Maven. “You can’t eat a gingerbread house for breakfast, Maven.”

<><><>

My hands latch onto Cal’s biceps as his tongue teases mine. He may have spent the last half-hour driving on his bike, but his mouth, as always, is warm, like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day.

Pinned between my boyfriend and the bathroom vanity, I let Cal’s hands grip my hips, half-wanting to say screw it and hoist me up onto the counter.

I’ve been at home all week, helping my brothers shovel the snow flurries that we’ve gotten and Mom and Gee with Christmas shopping. With the Academy on a long break, I haven’t seen Cal all week. 

Now, his rough tongue, teeth, and soft but evil lips are reminding me of who he is to me, tearing me apart and completing me at once. Not the docile thing he forces himself to be around my brothers, but Cal, my hot, ten-out-of-ten, sometimes-possessive boyfriend. He presses against me, as though I’m planning on slinking away from him as my hands trail his chest, his abs, hard beneath his fluffy sweater. 

Uncontrollably, I giggle against his lips, so hard I’m forced to pull away.

Cal’s bronze eyes are confused at first, until they catch me staring at the dancing polar bear wearing a festive Christmas vest on the front of his sweater. Otherwise, there are some snowflakes and red and green checkers, but the polar bear is truly the star of the show. It’s standing on its hind legs, arms stuck out and mouth hanging open as though it’s singing.

My sweater is boring. It involves a mean-looking cat and some white polka dots. 

Cal lets out a discontented growl from his throat. “Really,” he whispers, holding onto my hips a little tighter. One of his hands sinks lower. “You had to interrupt a perfectly good make-out session to make fun of my sweater.”

My hands loop around his neck. “You look so handsome in your ugly sweater, Cal.”

He loves when I compliment him like that, even if I think it’s bad for his ego.

Cal chuckles, and though it’s seductive at first, it melts into something more playful. He leans in towards my ear. “And you look beautiful in yours, as always.”

I blink at him, pressing my lips together. 

He might be hot, but he’s also a total sweetheart. A more romantic boyfriend simply does not exist. 

“I love you,” I tell him, bubbles of hot chocolate that I never drank in my stomach.

Prepared for it, Cal deposits a kiss on my forehead. “I love you t—”

Through the door, somewhere in the living room, a crashing sound rings out, along with a human “oof.” It’s a prolonged sound that involves plastic cracking and something like glass hitting the floor softly but not breaking. A couple of seconds later, I hear the voices of Gisa, Evangeline, and Cameron all accusing somebody of being an idiot.

So more than likely, Kilorn did something.

<><><>

As the four adults entered the Barrow house, they found a scene of wild, albeit expected, chaos.

In Missus Barrow’s cherished kitchen, decked out with dozens of cream cabinets and cupboards, the younger Calore was lashing out at Farley and Ruth, claiming they had told him that there would be gingerbread houses to eat, not that they were being forced to make gingerbread houses.

Farley replied, telling Maven that he could always just leave and go begging on the streets for food.

Julian and Sara, wearing a two-person Christmas sweater that involved a picture of Santa Claus sitting on a toilet and Missus Claus taking a bath, balanced their gifts in their free arms. It took little knowledge of Julian Jacos to guess that regardless of who he had gotten for Secret Santa, he had probably bought them a book.

Dane Davidson, meanwhile, was wearing a non-so-ugly striped sweater, while Carmadon wore a literal suit with Christmas lights stapled to it. They too bore Secret Santa gifts in their arms. 

The living room, however, was a scene of far greater chaos, and Carmadon couldn’t help but laugh at it so loudly that Missus Barrow gave him a horrified look.

The Barrows’ living room was now complete with artful furniture. Along with a cozy fireplace, French doors to a currently-useless patio, and sprawling windows that offered a panoramic view of the backyard, the woodsy space was by-far the most beautiful room in the house. As of the moment, it was also the grounds of a shouting match between Gisa, Evangeline, Camerone Cole, and Kilorn Warren, that homeless boy that the Barrows took in. 

Carmadon noted the fallen fake Christmas tree in the corner of the room. It looked as though it had been cracked in half, now lying in two pieces across the circular red Christmas rug it had formerly stood upon. Synthetic green needles littered the rug, and bulbs, pop culture figurines with strings, and cutesy animal ornaments scattered across the wooden floor. Miraculously, only the tree itself had been broken. The dozens of wrapped presents that had already made it under the tree were now waiting along the window seat, unharmed.

With a few more glances, Carmadon saw that a cordless vacuum cleaner had been left out, awaiting to be used on the area rug and couches. Bree and Tramy, somehow associated with the disaster, looked on guiltily. Mare, Cal, Shade, and Thomas looked at the accident rather boredly, as though they had indeed expected something like this to happen. Farley, Ruth, and Maven seemed to be ignoring it from the haven of the kitchen, even as Farley blocked Maven from the fridge.

Kilorn was still on the floor, glancing between the two pieces of Christmas tree. Gisa looked as though she was about to cry. Evangeline looked as though she was ready to slit Kilorn’s throat for ruining Christmas. 

Somehow, the boy had managed to snap the tree right in half without destroying a single present or ornament. 

“The stores are closing early,” Gisa moaned. She might as well have curled up on the floor in defeat in that moment, considering that her first-ever Christmas out of East Harlem was about to be ruined.

“That’s what you get for buying synthetic garbage,” Farley hollered from the kitchen. “If there were any real men here, you would’ve cut down a real tree and this never would’ve happened.”

Julian, Carmadon, and Davidson, all too wise to rise to Farley’s bait, only advanced past the disaster and took up seats along the sectional. Thomas smirked, crossing his arms, and Maven continued to beg Farley for something to eat, claiming he hadn’t had breakfast yet.

The Barrow brothers and Cal, however, rose their brows. They, personally, all considered themselves real men. Shade was especially offended that his fiancée dare say that about him.

Bree, obviously guilt-ridden about having left the vacuum out, stepped forward, still in his bathrobe and slippers. Yet as he looked to Cal, some of that guilt faded away and was replaced by something else. 

“Tramy, Shade, and I will go get a real tree,” Bree decided, eyes bright with mischief. “And we’ll take Cal out to the woods with us.”


	4. The Great Christmas Gingerbread House-Off

With the Barrow brothers now gone from the house and likely bullying Cal in a forest somewhere, Gisa only had to make one adjustment to the teams.

Julian and Sara made up one, and Davidson and Carmadon made up a second. Evangeline and Elane were a third, Maven and Thomas were a forth, Kilorn and Cameron were a fifth, and Missus Barrow and Farley were a sixth. (Shade had initially wanted to be Diana’s partner, but the daughter-in-law knew that he would only hold her back from winning.) Bree and Tramy would’ve been partners, but they were gone. Gisa was supposed to partner with Shade, and Mare would’ve partnered with Cal, but both of the boys were gone.

That left Gisa with Mare.

The youngest Barrow sighed, knowing that she had no chance of winning with her sister.

Mare was equally disappointed that she didn’t get to make a gingerbread house with her boy toy.

Cal had arrived at the house that morning with a literal blueprint of his future gingerbread house. It may have been messily sketched on a piece of notebook paper, but it had all of the details. He had even been planning to ask Mister Barrow if he could borrow the power drill to make windows, and there were supposed to be gingerbread versions of Mare and Cal outside of the house. Gingerbread Cal was going to have a frosted black leather jacket.

Cal was the kind of man who wasn’t afraid to go all-out making gingerbread houses with his girl. Mare had told Gisa that in her opinion, it was a total turn-on.

But now, over the holiday music that filtered through the kitchen, both of the Barrow sisters sulked as they looked on at the scene.

The team members, all of whom wore some sort of holiday-themed sweater, scattered about the kitchen, threatening to make it burst at the seams. Kilorn had already dropped a sheet of gingerbread, and most of the counters were smeared with some degree of frosting. While some teams, like that of Julian and Sara, were working at a methodical, easy-going pace, other teams were competing to see who could finish first. By that, Gisa was most thinking about Maven, who glared at Farley from the kitchen island.

On the center kitchen island rested everything that one might need to construct a gingerbread house. Pre-baked sheets of gingerbread stacked one on top of the other, a dozen bags of frosting were scattered across the marble, and bowls and bowls of gumdrops and chocolates and sprinkles waited here and there. Two sheets of freshly-baked gingerbread men and women were at the island’s center, courtesy of Ruth and Farley, who had a bit of a mess going.

While most of the teams were either working at their designated kitchen counter spaces or the breakfast table by the windows, Ruth and Diana were buzzing about the kitchen, running between their half-finished masterpiece of a gingerbread house and the beginnings of Christmas Eve dinner. Along with gingerbread men, Ruth Barrow was in the midst of tossing pie crusts and stirring batter. Farley was chopping carrots and celery like one had never seen.

Gisa supposed that there were real-life applications for being a Scarlet Street Fighter.

<><><>

Even though he wasn’t technically cooking anything, Kilorn was proud to wear his “Kiss The Cook” apron as he and Cameron Cole worked on their second gingerbread house.

For breaking the first one, along with the Christmas tree, Kilorn was currently in hot water with the family that he lived with. Gisa had even muttered something about taking away his bedroom and putting him under the stairs, just like Mare had wanted.

Still, at the counter with his girlfriend, Kilorn was having a good time.

“How did the gingerbread man treat his injured leg?” 

Cameron rolled her eyes yet again, knowing full-well that Kilorn was just stealing all of the jokes Cal had planned to use on Mare. Still, her reaction was similar. “How?” she muttered, trying to stop an annoyed smile.

Kilorn grinned. “By icing it.”

Maven, also knowing where these jokes had come from, sighed before stuffing a few gumdrops into his mouth.

Kilorn struck again. This afternoon, he had realized that Cameron liked funny men, whether or not she admitted it. He was glad he had finally made his move on her last month. Kilorn couldn’t get over her mahogany skin or luscious curls. He was definitely punching above his weight on this one.

“What did the gingerbread man say when his house burned down?”

“What?”

The rest of the room braced itself for one of Cal’s God-awful jokes.

“Dang. That cost me a lot of dough.”

<><><>

Evangeline stared back at Mare, who discontentedly deposited gumdrops on top of her gingerbread house’s gabled roof. It looked decent enough, with its candy cane windows and licorice fence, but Mare’s heart wasn’t in it. Mare’s heart was in a forest somewhere, being ridiculed over a piece of scarlet lingerie. 

Gisa hit Mare’s hand away from the roof of the house. “Not there,” she hissed, glaring at the misplaced red gumdrops. “Those go on the chimney.”

Perhaps, Evangeline wondered, it had been Cal’s plan to put the red gumdrops on the gabled roof.

She and Elane, honestly, were putting even less work into their creation than Mare was putting into hers. They had finished glueing together the walls with hardened sugar and began frosting the roof, but neither of them had bothered to pick up any decorations from the kitchen island. Evangeline only appreciated the fine things in life, such as the interior design of actual homes. Not this third-grade garbage. 

Similarly, she had refused to wear an ugly sweater tonight, opting for a pretty green cashmere sweater instead.

As soon as the youngest Barrow left the table and headed for the island in search of something or other, Evangeline dropped her piping bag to the table. It made a soft clunk, and Barrow looked up.

“What?” she asked, her tone edging on defensive. She, like Evangeline, hadn’t forgotten how much they had once hated one another. They had since accepted their mutual existence, but that didn’t mean they didn’t snap at each other every so often. Besides. Evangeline’s expression was something between mockery and pity.

“You’re pathetic,” Evangeline said, shaking her head. “Sitting here on Christmas Eve, sulking because you don’t get to decorate a gingerbread house with your boyfriend.”

Mare’s near-imperceptible sigh gave her away. But Evangeline knew it was more than the gingerbread house. Cal had been in the city all week, and Mare had been stuck here with her family. And now that homeless idiot had ruined Mare’s afternoon by falling into the Barrows’ Christmas tree. Evangeline supposed that she too might feel sad if Elane was taken away from her just as they were about to spend some quality time together.

However: it wouldn’t involve making gingerbread houses.

“If I recall correctly, the deed to this house is in your name, Mare. You should put Bree and Tramy in their places and tell them that you can do whatever you want with your big hunk of meat wherever you want.”

Mare cringed at Evangeline’s description of Cal. 

Still, the former dancer continued. Evangeline was fairly certain that Mare was zoning her out, considering she was launching into a spiel about social constructs and how brothers shouldn’t be so overprotective of their sisters, even if they just care about them. 

A new Christmas song came on, and some old dude on the Bluetooth speaker began singing about reindeers and jingle bells. Cameron Cole laughed at another one of Kilorn’s plagiarized jokes. Mare decided to thoroughly tune out Evangeline and return her focus to her gumdrops.

But suddenly, nothing short of a Christmas miracle popped into Evangeline’s head.

The strangest part was that Evangeline was doing it out of the kindness of her heart.

Glancing behind her, Evangeline saw that Gisa was currently picking a fight with Maven on the quality of his gingerbread house. In return for calling it trash, Maven threatened to schewer Gisa’s house with the sharp points of his candy canes. He and Thomas were currently in the process of making icicles out of them.

“I have an idea,” Evangeline said, leaning on her forearms. She gave Elane a devilish look before pinning her eyes on Mare. 

That look intrigued Mare. She returned the gesture, leaning forward. “What?”

“Every girl should get to be the person she loves on Christmas Eve. Elane and I will buy you an hour alone with Cal downstairs tonight.”

<><><>

While well-structured and aesthetically-pleasing, the gingerbread houses of Julian and Sara, Davidson and Carmadon, and Mare and Gisa just didn’t stand a chance in the contest.

Evangeline and Elane had dropped out midway through, deciding that the contest wasn’t worth their time. Instead, they spent the next forty-five minutes taking Instagramable selfies that they could post for their followers. Kilorn and Cameron’s house had naturally fallen apart.

That left the gingerbread houses of Ruth and Farley and Maven and Thomas. 

Safe to say that the two gingerbread houses were quite different in nature. The Barrow matriarch and her favorite daughter-in-law had crafted a grand house, complete with a roof of vanilla icing and blue and green swirls. The fence was made out of pretzels, and more pretzels made a ladder extending up the side of the house. Cutesy candy canes and a rainbow of gumdrops decorated every available surface. A gingerbread woman with a mound of frosting on her stomach stood next to her gingerbread fiancé.

Daniel Barrow, examining the house, was happy to see that Ruth and Farley had included Shade in the house. The father had heard more than a few complaints from his son that Ruth preferred Farley to him.

The second gingerbread house was . . . scary. Its fence was made of sharpened candy canes, as were the icicles. Vanilla icing-dyed red dripped from the roof. Gumdrops had been ripped apart to create splatters of blood leading up to the door, which bore a “KEEP OUT OR DIE” sign. In the front yard, one of the gingerbread men was missing an arm, and the other no longer had a head.

“You gotta be different sometimes, Mister Barrow,” Thomas said, trying to explain his boyfriend’s creation.

Mister Barrow, the official judge of the contest, couldn’t decide if he liked the house or not. It did look delicious, though.

“I’m pregnant with your grandchild,” Farley told Mister Barrow again, and Ruth winked at him.

For all he knew, his wife would force him out on the couch if he gave the contest to Maven and Thomas.

“That’s nepotism,” Maven hissed, glaring at Ruth. Ruth glared right back, threatening Maven’s dinner with her eyes.

“I say this with no partiality,” Daniel announced, swallowing. “But I do believe that my wife and Diana won the contest.”

The room let out groans, not believing that Mister Barrow was a fair and impartial judge.

Still, Farley got all up in Maven’s face, hurling a variety of insults at him. 

Maven just sneered, reaching past the pregnant woman and taking a gumdrop from the chimney of her house.

Daniel shook his head, choosing to gaze out the window rather than watch whatever fight was about to take place. 

The snow was starting. As of the moment, it was a gentle fall, straight from a snowglobe. But according to the news, Long Island would be under a winter weather advisory in the next hour or so, and then they’d be in the midst of a full-out blizzard. 

Although Mister Barrow pretended to hate Cal, he did hope that his boys didn’t keep him out there too long.


	5. Into the Woods

With his eyes closed, Cal sat in the backseat of Tramy’s rickety pickup truck.

He no longer wore his ugly sweater. Cal had put on one of his sweatshirts Mare kept in her room, along with his leather jacket, winter boots, hat, and gloves.

He imagined that he was in the warmth of the Barrows’ kitchen, listening to Christmas music and feeding gumdrops to his girl. God, Cal had two dozen terrible gingerbread-related puns to use on Mare, and now Kilorn was probably putting them all to waste. 

Stupid, stupid Kilorn. 

Making gingerbread houses was one of the only activities Bree and Tramy found “appropriate” for Mare and Cal to do together at the Barrow house. And now Kilorn had wrecked the Christmas tree, and Cal was paying the price while Kilorn stole his jokes and made gingerbread houses.

The Barrow boys and Cal were driving along a snow-packed dirt road somewhere in Long Island, Tramy at the wheel. From the passenger seat, Bree kept telling Tramy to slow down, and from the backseat, Shade kept telling Tramy he was an idiot. As the best driver in the car, Cal felt the need to tell Tramy that he ought to slow down, but as Mare’s boyfriend, he knew he wasn’t allowed to do that.

It was around two in the afternoon, and the blizzard that was swallowing the entire Northeast was nearing Long Island. Flurries of snow were falling, and a gentle but chilling wind pushed at the pine trees along the road. The sky was already darkening with angry grey clouds. 

The boys were trying to hurry it up. Bree hadn’t realized what he’d been signing up for when he volunteered to go find a new Christmas tree. He had just been thinking about vetting his sister’s boyfriend; between trekking through the woods and answering Bree’s questions, Cal had already faced a good amount of physical labor and interrogation. Thus far, the boys had made three stops at three separate sites, but they hadn’t found a single tree to use their bow saw on.

Secretly, Cal liked Tramy’s pickup. Like Farley’s, it was red, but it had none of the embellishments. The paint was peeling and so were the leather seats. Though Tramy was a horrible driver, the pickup would’ve bumped and shaken down the road even had Cal been driving it. The cab had this distinctive blue-collar man smell that for whatever reason, reminded Cal of the nineteen-seventies.

He also didn’t mind that Bree had classic rock n’ roll going on the radio. Silently, Cal tapped his foot, resisting the urge to sing along to “Dream On” by Aerosmith.

But just as the chorus was about to start again, Bree put a hand to the volume dial and cut back the volume by half. Aerosmith’s lyrics teased Cal, loud enough to hear but not loud enough to enjoy.

“So Cal,” Bree started, in fact the way that he started all conversations with his sister’s boyfriend.

Shade sighed, crossed his arms, and slouched into his seat. 

In the rearview mirror, Tramy’s eyes—identical to Mare’s—flickered to Cal, who didn’t allow himself to squirm in his seat. 

“What’s up, Bree?” Cal asked, forcing interest into his eyes. He really just wanted to be making gingerbread houses right now.

“I was just wondering what you’re getting our sister for Christmas.”

Cal held his breath for a moment, certain that the Barrow brother was going to make some lingerie comment. So far the afternoon had consisted of Bree and Tramy badgering Cal about how he treated Mare on dates and if she was really having sleepovers with the Academy girls every weekend. (Number One: Cal, an exemplary gentleman, always held the door open for Mare, always listened to what she had to say, and always offered his jacket if she was cold. Number Two: while Mare did hang out with the Academy girls, she had never actually gone to a sleepover with them. However, Cal wasn’t about to tell the three Barrow brothers that Mare spent every Saturday at his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.)

When nothing came, Cal opened his mouth, trying to figure out how to make words come out of it.

“I got her a ring,” he said simply and regretted it the instant the words left.

He was expecting it, but Cal still flinched as Tramy slammed on the brakes to his pickup. It was a miracle that the truck’s airbags didn’t deploy, considering how the seat belt constricted against Cal’s body. Shade quite literally yelped, swearing at his brother with his usual light cusses. A moment later, the tires ground to a halt, crushing snow beneath them and leaving the pickup in the middle of the road. Like two predators, Bree and Tramy twisted around in their seats to stare at Cal.

“You wanna propose to her?” Bree asked in the form of an alarming yell. His eyes were wide, and his knuckles turned white against the seat. “You’ve been dating her for two months, Cal.”

Shade, realizing that he didn’t have anything to worry about, gave Cal an annoyed look. 

Yes, Cal should’ve clarified what kind of ring he had gotten Mare.

Tramy tore his attention off Cal long enough so that he could mute the radio. The pickup descended into quiet as the snow continued to fall. Bree and Tramy, although they might have worn puffy winter jackets and colorful hats knitted by their mother, looked ready to push Cal out of their truck and use their bow saw on him.

Cal imagined that Mare would wear the ring on her right hand. It was a simple band of gold set with a single ruby and silver. For some cosmic reason beyond his knowledge, the ring had always reminded Cal of Mare and him, even that first time he had laid eyes on it at a vintage jewelry store in Brooklyn.

“I’m . . . I’m not proposing to her,” Cal sputtered, wildly shaking his head as a scarlet blush blossomed onto his cheeks. 

Now somewhat bored and annoyed, Shade chimed in. “I’m guessing it’s a promise ring,” he explained, helping out Cal when he couldn’t seem to form the words.

Bree and Tramy looked to one another with scowls, eyes communicating what to do next.

“She made me swear that I would only get her one present for Christmas,” Cal said slowly, so as not to anger two beasts ready to strike. He considered putting up his hands to placate them. “And . . . we never dated for fun. It’s been serious since the beginning.” He hid his swallow as Bree and Tramy raised their brows, as though Cal had said something wrong. “I want to give her something that will remind her all the time how much I love her. How serious I am about us. I like to think of it as a promise ring, yeah.”

What Cal said next came spewing from the depths of his stupid soul, but it was like the brothers were dissecting him with their eyes. He thought that if he didn’t say anything more, they might toss him out of the truck for real. 

“I know we’ve only been together for two months. But I told her that I loved her before I kissed her for the first time.” And they had been close before that too, whether or not they had wanted to admit it at the time. They had never been friends, though. Teacher and student, yes. Fitness enthusiasts, yes. Rivals, most definitely. But Mare had never called Cal her friend.

“I know that you guys don’t like me because my family’s rich. But money’s never mattered to me like that. Maybe you don’t like me because I’m two years older than Mare. Or maybe you don’t like me because I have a motorcycle and I take your sister out for rides on it.”

Based on Bree and Tramy’s expressions, yes, they didn’t like Cal for all of those reasons.

“But I love her, and I respect her. I’ll always take care of her.”

Cal didn’t care if this was the twenty-first century. Chivalry wasn’t dead.

“For the record, even if I thought that we had been dating long enough,” Cal started again, “I wouldn’t be able to propose to her because I don’t have your blessings or your dad’s. And I’d wait as long as it takes to get your blessing.”

Though he didn’t tell the brothers, he’d marry their sister today if they let him.

For a long, agonizing moment, nobody said anything. Shade nodded, as though he approved of Cal’s speech. Cal feared that the lingerie incident would make his words mean nothing.

Part of Cal just wanted to tell the brothers to forget it and get going. The roads would be consumed by all sorts of nasty stuff soon enough.

But finally, Bree Barrow, the eldest son, clucked his tongue. “So you’re saying that you’d wait for her for, I don’t know, ten years. If that’s how long it took me to decide that you were a suitable choice for my sister.”

Honestly, Cal was fairly sure that Mare would slap Bree across the face, say “screw it,” and invite everyone to their wedding except Bree if he took ten years to give Cal his blessing.

Still, Cal nodded. “Of course.” He wanted all of the Barrow men’s blessings before he so much as asked Julian for his mother’s ring. 

Shade’s face was something between annoyance and amusement. “Bree, I swear to God, if you make me watch this bullshit that you pull with Cal every time he comes over for ten years, I’m going to lose my mind.”

Bree just let out a dark chuckle. 

Shade continued, turning to Cal. “Besides. My brothers might be vetting you to make sure you’re not some worthless piece of trash, but they’re also a little sad. Their sister is all grown up. They don’t get to be protective of Mare anymore like they used to, even though they love to try.”

Tramy let out a discontented grunt.

Bree rolled his eyes, even though there was some sadness hidden behind them. He sighed after another moment. “We know that you’re a decent guy, Calore,” he drawled as he peered at Cal. “We just figured that if you really love her, you’d put up with all of our bullshit. And yeah, I’m sad that my sister’s grown up.”

He said the last part reluctantly with a sneer.

“But if she has to have a boyfriend, then we suppose it better be you,” Tramy finished. It might have been heartfelt, but Tramy’s cringe said that he didn’t think so.

Cal didn’t know what to say. He tried to stop the wild, crooked grin from popping up onto his face, but something like a drunken smile appeared upon his lips anyway. 

Happy to be done with this conversation, Tramy took his foot off the brake pedal. “You can date Mare, Cal. But if I ever find another piece of lingerie in our house, you’ll pay.”


	6. Kiss the Cook

With the gingerbread houses now neatly arranged atop the breakfast table, Ruth Barrow and Farley had the entire kitchen to themselves.

Feeding nineteen people, the Barrow brothers and a four-month-pregnant Diana Farley included, took a lot of work on Christmas Eve.

On the evening’s menu were a number of things. A beef rib roast with porcini jus was the main entrée, while roasted potatoes and mushrooms, some sort of fettuccini, cheddar biscuits, and cajun shrimp were all side dishes. Cranberry sauce, platters of vegetables and dip, and three types of pie were also on the menu, along with a lot of wine.

Diana was Ruth’s protégé. As a former gang leader, she was good with a knife, and Ruth found that Diana could chop vegetables and slice meat in half the time that she could. It was only a matter of time before they bought aprons to match their horrifyingly-ugly sweaters.

While Evangeline and Elane flat-out refused to help in the kitchen, Ruth knew that she couldn’t trust Kilorn or Mare. With Daniel and Gee out looking for a last-minute real-tree stand, that left two young boys to help Ruth in the kitchen.

Maven scowled as he kneaded the dough for the cheddar biscuits atop the counter that looked out at the living room. Half of the Barrows’ guests were just lounging over there, sitting on the furniture he had picked out at that disgusting Ashley Furniture Homestore, drinking wine, and relaxing. Davidson and Kilorn were sitting on the sectional, the homeless boy with that horrible posture of his, rewatching the New York Giants game from two days ago. 

How was it fair that despite ruining Christmas, Kilorn was the one that got off free and easy? Maven was working his ass off at Stanford, but the Barrows didn’t intend to give him any breaks. Ruth Barrow had already told him that if he wanted to eat tonight and stay at the house for the week, he’d have to pull his weight. Maven couldn’t say he was surprised that Missus Barrow was so mean. She had raised Mare, after all.

Maven folded the dough over itself again before rather aggressively flattening it with his rolling pin. 

“Hey,” Farley barked at him, seeing the way that he was handling the dough from her place mixing homemade fettuccine sauce. “Settle down. Or I’ll have you back seasoning the shrimp.”

Maven had already told Farley that he was allergic to shellfish. She didn’t seem to believe in allergies, claiming that they were something invented by the weak kids of Generation-Z. But more than likely, Farley would just enjoy watching Maven have an allergic reaction in the kitchen. 

The woman had even made him wear a hairnet, insisting that Stanford had bedbugs. He also had Kilorn’s “Kiss the Cook” apron on over his skeleton Christmas sweater, making for a rather ridiculous ensemble. 

The women had Thomas over at the stove, manning simmering cranberries and some sort of sauce that they’d later pour over the beef roast. He was also wearing a hairnet and apron, and Maven had to say, he looked pretty cute. He always did, though.

“You know, Maven, I’m going to have to come over there later,” Thomas said from across the kitchen. “Your apron says I have to kiss the cook.”

<><><>

Ruth and Diana peered inside one of their two wall ovens.

In sync, they glanced at one another.

“I think it’s perfect,” Farley said, assessing the apple pie that was currently simmering inside. Ruth had trained her eye to examine the golden tint, the texture of the apples, all through the glass door. 

If only for suspense, Ruth didn’t say anything at first.

“Good job, Diana. I totally agree,” she said, a grin spreading across her face. “It’s perfect.”

A moment passed, and the two women took the perfect pie from the oven. It was solely Diana’s creation, and Ruth had to admit that its crust and filling looked to die for. The scent of baked apples permeated the air a moment later. It joined the scent of Ruth’s blueberry pie.

Ruth was right beside Diana, tapping at her baby bump. “You know who’s really excited to try some of your pie, Diana?”

Farley may have loathed the idea of domesticity, but she wasn’t opposed to cooking. She enjoyed the chopping, the beating. And making something that might as well have been art was just amazing.

The mother-in-law was staring endearingly at her pregnant stomach. While Ruth Barrow was happy to be nearly done raising her five children—though four of them still lived at home—she was very, very excited to become a grandma. The woman was constantly getting stuck in Target looking at baby clothes, texting Farley about the size of the baby—it was currently an avocado—and telling Farley old stories about her five babies.

Farley was too happy about the pie to snap at Maven, who was just not doing a good job with the cheddar biscuits.

As though she was petting a dog, Ruth put her hand to Farley’s stomach. The former Scarlet Street Fighter once considered it weird, but she and Ruth Barrow were tight now. 

“Oh,” Ruth murmured with that motherly voice. “My sweet, little avo—”

The front door, impossible to see from the kitchen, flung open so hard it hit the doorstop.

In the living room, Davidson muted the TV, and Julian dropped whatever academic conversation he was having with Carmadon and Evangeline. Maven ceased mixing the garlic butter sauce for the biscuits, and Thomas stopped slicing potatoes.

The sound of a pine tree just a little too thick to fit through the Barrows’ door rustled through the air. It was accompanied by four joyous males, each of them letting out some variation of whoop, cheer, or yell.

Gisa, who had gotten back to the house with her dad an hour before, might as well have started sobbing tears of joy by the look on her face. In the living room, she had sat nervously fiddling with the tree stand she and Mister Barrow had bought last-minute at the hardware store twenty minutes away.

Only when Cal and Bree emerged from the entryway, passed through the sitting room, skirted the kitchen, and arrived in the living room did Gisa launch out of her chair and throw herself at Cal.

“Took you long enough,” Farley told the two boys, saying it again when Tramy and Shade made their way into the kitchen. Still, it was a nice tree. Probably around eight feet tall, the real Christmas tree had abundant and thick branches, sloping down to its base in the shape of a triangle. Gisa would probably employ the help of Maven and Evangeline to help decorate it, even if that turned into a royal disaster.

“We couldn’t find any trees on our first four stops,” Tramy argued, throwing his coat onto the bar stool in the kitchen. With a glare from his mother, he retreated towards the mudroom. “We chopped that one down on our fifth.”

Maven gave the Barrow brother an incredulous look. “You mean you couldn’t find any trees in the first four forests?”

Cal and Bree laughed as they brought the tree to where Gisa wanted it, right on top of the red Christmas rug in the room’s corner. A few of the guests even applauded for them, and Farley noted that Bree didn’t seem to be glaring at Cal as he usually did. She even swore that he mentioned something to Cal about the New York Giants, who were having a crappy football season but had won the game two days ago. 

Dare Farley say that they had somehow bonded during their outdoorsy tough-men trip?


	7. The Trades

Bree wasn’t one for the cutesy things that Christmas brought, like gingerbread houses or matching pajama sets, but he didn’t mind decorating the tree with his sister.

Or rather, Bree didn’t mind getting bossed around by Gisa, who otherwise needed a ladder to reach the last foot of the tree. They had a good system. Gee would hand Bree the ornament and point to the exact branch that she wanted it hung on. At last released from being kitchen slaves, Maven and Thomas had a similar system going on the other side of the tree.

It was Thomas’s turn to be judgmental. “Another ballerina ornament? This is like the fifth one.” He dangled the object from his left hand, looking at the tutu’d ballerina that Mare had picked out a few weeks back. (To Cal’s chagrin, there were no contemporary dance ornaments in all of Manhattan.) With a little movement, the decoration caught the lamplight, and the arabesqued dancer turned into molten gold.

Maven eyed the decoration for all of two seconds. “Put that one in the back. We already put two of Mare’s ridiculous ballerina ornaments on the front.”

Bree, deciding then that he had to go to the bathroom, put his latest ornament on the tree before making the trip across the living room. The window seat was still piled with presents covered in a variety of wrapping papers, the TV replayed the Jets game that they had unfortunately won two days ago, and the Barrows’ guests all lounged around the living room. As always, it was a warm setting, combatting the edging-on-violent snow flurries that hit the windows from outside. A winter weather advisory had just been announced.

With displeasure, Bree realized that meant Cal would have to spend the night at the house. 

He passed Kilorn, who was busy on his hands and knees scrubbing at the dirty snow the boys had tracked in from outside. Like Missus Barrow was actually going to let Kilorn get away with breaking the Christmas tree.

Farley and Ruth were still busy in the kitchen. Dinner would be in about an hour. Daniel was pitching in now, putting miniature hot dogs and crescent rolls together to make the one dish Kilorn had requested: pigs in a blanket.

Past their sitting room, Bree took a left turn to one of the house’s many bathrooms. Tramy was already there, staring at the closed door with narrowed eyes.

He noticed his older brother and nodded to the door. It took Bree a moment, but once he focused his and drowned out the sound of his mom and sister-in-law singing Christmas karaoke, he heard a woman quietly moaning from inside. 

Bree hadn’t seen Cal in a hot ten minutes. 

God, his audacity. Apparently Cal thought it was fine to bond with Bree over football one minute and do disgusting things with his sister the next. In his family’s bathroom, of all places.

Bree was not having it.

He didn’t waste any time in twisting the door handle and pushing open the door.

The bathroom was one of their smaller ones, with just a toilet and a small counter. Like the other bathrooms, Gee had taken the liberty of decorating it with festive towels and hand soaps, but the people inside of the bathroom were not those that the brothers had expected.

Elane was sitting on the counter, her sleek red hair mussed and Christmas sweater off one shoulder. She had her hands on Evangeline’s snakeskin belt, who was standing beneath her legs. Both of the women wore dangerously high heels and irked expressions as they stared down the two boys who had so rudely interrupted them. Their lipstick, somehow, was perfectly intact.

Elane, her eyes somewhat glossed over, smiled at the boys. “Wanna watch?”

Tramy shook his head in an instant, and though Bree thought about it for a moment, he ultimately shook his head as well, backing out of the room.

“Sorry,” Tramy stammered. “Should’ve knocked.”

Evangeline turned around, and Elane was forced to let go of her lover's belt. Both over six feet tall, neither Bree nor Tramy were afraid of many people, but Evangeline and Elane were unique. Ruthlessly beautiful, arrogant, and scary, the two women were forces to be reckoned with. They regarded the brothers as though they were peasants, and Evangeline tilted her mean lips down. "Yes, you should've. But I get it. You wanted to catch Cal in the act so that you could toss him out into a blizzard on Christmas Eve."

With nothing to say to the women, Bree and Tramy slowly backed away. For whatever reason, Evangeline decided to check her watch.

Her eyes lit up, and behind her, Elane grinned, stepping down from the counter.

“Wait.” Evangeline’s raised palm arrested Bree and Tramy in place, who really wanted to get back to tree decorating. “I know that we never talk, but Elane and I wanted to talk to you two about something.”

Yes. Evangeline and Elane never talked to Bree and Tramy because they were of two separate social classes and had absolutely nothing in common. Evangeline would sooner spit on the brothers than chat with them. 

Bree and Tramy, wondering what in the world the two women wanted from them, rose their brows.

Evangeline put on a nervous smile and forced a red blush to her cheeks. Ballet had made her too good an actor.

“Well you know, neither Elane or I dance anymore. We’re in-between jobs, I guess. I mean, we have trust funds to last our entire lives, but we do . . . want to be contributing members of society.”

Elane spoke next with that purring tone of hers. It didn’t match what left her mouth.

“We want to go into the trades.”

If either of the brothers were holding something, they surely would’ve dropped it. Bree almost choked on his own spit. The trades? Like welding, carpentry, and plumbing? Tramy took one look at the girls’ heels, their tight jeans, and their gaudy makeup.

Evangeline didn’t appreciate their silence. “What? You think that women can’t be tradesmen?”

It wasn’t that. As two tradesmen, one an electrician and the other in carpentry school, Bree and Tramy were all about women who wanted to become tradesmen. It just didn’t seem like Evangeline or Elane would like getting her hands dirty.

On the other hand, they were the scariest women the brothers had ever met. They were vicious and motivated enough to get to the top of any trade. 

Tramy blinked at them. “Seriously?” Maybe Evangeline’s loss to Mare in the ballet world had prompted an early midlife crisis.

“Obviously,” Elane purred in that seductive, non-tradesmen way of hers.

Evangeline pointed to the ceiling. “Could we go upstairs, if you aren’t busy?” Her blush deepened. Evangeline didn’t want others to know about her secret dreams. “We want to talk about all of the trades.”

<><><>

I watch as Bree and Tramy head upstairs with Evangeline and Elane, eager to tell the two women all that they know about the trades.

An evil smirk widens across my lips as I cross my arms and slip through the kitchen. 

“What time do you guys think dinner will be at?” I ask casually, nodding at Mom and Farley. I can’t count how many scents I’m currently picking up in our kitchen.

“It’s looking like it’ll be six-thirty,” Mom tells me, smiling over a bowl of fettuccine noodles.

“Sounds good,” I chirp before winding around one of our kitchen counters to enter the living room. 

From their couch, Julian, Carmadon, Davidson, and Sara all look onward at me. Julian’s pinched his lips together, and Sara’s nodding proudly at me. They heard what Carmadon said to Cal a few minutes ago, and they know exactly what’s really going on. 

Before I slip around the staircase to the basement, Carmadon gives me a wink.

Mom and Dad are busy in the kitchen. Shade’s absorbed in the football game replay, even though our family hates the New York Jets. Bree and Tramy are upstairs, giving career advice in the trades to Evangeline and Elane.

Not interested in wasting a single moment with my boyfriend, I hurry down the wooden stairs. Our basement isn’t extraordinarily large compared to upstairs, but it has a big room that my brothers and I have a ping pong table in, along with couches from Ashley Furniture Homestore that I bought behind Maven’s back. Gisa has her own little seamstress room in what was supposed to be a closet, and the other big room downstairs functions as my in-home ballet studio. 

I stop at the end of the hallway and turn in for my bedroom. Two floors apart from the rest of my family, it’s my little escape where I can play my music loud and have dirty FaceTime discussions with Cal. It’s like being at home, minus the part where I constantly hear my siblings yelling at each other.

Softly, I click the door behind me and lock it. 

In my opinion, I have the nicest bedroom in the house. It might not have the master bedroom’s fancy walk-in closet, but it has a sizable bathroom and a row of windows at the top of one wall. I’m still waiting for Bree and Tramy to weld their bars over them.

My floor is wooden, and my walls are painted ivory-white. My queen-sized bed is set in the middle of the room, covered by a lilac-purple duvet. Otherwise, I have all of the usual furniture that a bedroom would have, along with a fluffy purple area rug before my bed, warm lamps, and a wall of four-by-six photos—many of which are just Cal’s selfies that he’s taken on my phone. Books from Julian line my pristine white bookshelf, and I have some artwork of famous ballet dancers and skyline shots of the city on my walls. My closet’s currently littered with all of the junk I usually have lying around.

“Mare?” Cal’s voice calls from the bathroom.

Excitement begins to boil inside of me. I take a step towards the bathroom.

“You’ve literally been living in this house for one month. How did you already screw up your pipes? Did you try to wash that cookie dough batter from last week down it?”

I pause in the middle of my room, my jaw hitting the floor.

With a peek past the bathroom door, I find Cal’s body sticking out of the cabinet beneath my sink. He has his phone flashlight on, and his hands are drifting from pipe to pipe, looking for whatever the problem with my sink is. 

I told Carmadon, who doesn’t at all mind dirty metaphors, to tell Cal that I needed help with my sink pipes downstairs. The lights had been dimmed to a romantic hue when I was last down here getting my room ready, but Cal has since turned them up to full brightness. At least my blinds are still shut. 

I guess that Cal and I have two different senses of humor. 

“I don’t know why you want me to look at your pipes,” Cal continues. From the corner of my eye, he shifts his flashlight. “I’m not a plumber, Mare. If you have a serious problem in here, you’re going to have to call someone.”

Smiling, I drift around the room, fixing my lights until my room is cast in a fiery gold again. I flick at the lighter I keep beside my candle selection, choose “Christmas Eve” by Yankee Candle for the night, and ignite its wick. Something like cinnamon and firewood bleeds into the air.

“But I only want you to fix my pipes, Cal,” I tell him, wishing and hoping that Cal catches my drift. I have somewhere around fifty-eight-and-a-half minutes left. 

I take Cal’s breath of silence to strip away my ugly sweater and sweatpants, leaving my body in only a familiar piece of lingerie.

Bree and Tramy may have thrown the first one out, but in his text on Black Friday, Cal had made it sound like he really, really, really liked the scarlet lace teddy I had sent my brother a picture of. So I went back, sucked the normal prices of Victoria’s Secret up, and bought another one. 

I’ve just been waiting for the right occasion to wear it.

The back is all straps. The front is all lace and leaves nothing to the imagination.

“What, so you don’t want to call a plumber?” Cal asks. He’s still thoroughly focused on the pipes beneath my sink when I approach the bathroom door and drape myself across the threshold. “Because I don’t know what I’m doing. Carmadon didn’t say if they were leaking or if they were backed up. He just said that you needed me down here ASAP.”

“I think that they’re leaking and backed up,” I tell Cal. I run my hand through my hair a couple of times, and with nothing else to do, start running my tongue over my lips.

Cal’s body shakes from laughter. “What the hell did you do to your pipes, Mare?”

I decide that I can’t stand Cal’s innocence any longer. I reach down the wall and turn off my bathroom lights, and for a moment, Cal plunges into darkness. I replace that with the light of the pure-red heat lamp I have attached to my ceiling.

“Mare.” Cal finally tilts his head up so that he can look at me. “I can’t see the pipes if—”

With one blink, Cal starts upward, only to remember that his head is inside of a cabinet. He hits his forehead on something or other and goes reeling backward.

“You didn’t mean the sink pipes,” Cal states in a groan.

“No,” I agree. “That was an analogy, Cal.”

His eyes never leave my body, cast in red with the light of the neon heat lamp.

Nor does he take long to recover, and like the graceful creature he is, Cal’s up in an instant. I try not to take too much pleasure in the reaction that I’ve already gotten from him and keep my eyes on his face.

He’s wearing one of the sweatshirts of his that I keep at the house. I might drown in it, but I love wearing it to bed. Now that he’s wearing it today, it’ll have his fresh scent on it.

I sound like an animal, but it’s true. 

On stiff legs, Cal approaches me. He smells like pine needles and cold winter air, which would make sense. His body, however, is the opposite of cold.

“Evangeline and Elane are buying us an hour,” I explain in a whisper. “They have my brothers upstairs talking about the trades. Don’t ask. So what do you want to do?”

Cal smirks, coming closer. He’s nothing less than a predator eyeing his next meal. “We could play Monopoly.”

Playing with him, I back away, out of the bathroom and towards my bed.

“Or we could watch The Office,” I tell him.

“We could even start choreographing for January’s first contemporary duet class,” Cal says.

But my knees meet my bed, and I don’t resist falling against my mattress. 

As I push myself backward, Cal follows me, his hands and knees leaving imprints in my duvet.


	8. Underneath the Tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that I completely forgot to copy and paste a chapter. Go read chapter 6, "Kiss the Cook" if you missed it.   
> Enjoy! And if you haven't yet, go check out Calore Dance Academy!

“Missus Barrow.” Cal puts out a pleading hand. “I have enough. Really. Please don’t—”

Mom puts yet another spoonful of gravy on Cal’s beef roast.

“Cal, sweetie,” she says, assessing Cal’s plate. “You have to stay big and strong to be Mare’s ballet partner. And I know that my boys worked you hard today, trekking through the woods to find our family the perfect Christmas tree. I also know how excited you were to make gingerbread houses. You didn’t have to go with them, but it was very kind of you.”

Bree, at another counter in the kitchen, takes another spooning of potatoes. He gives Mom a look, as though he thinks that Cal could have worked harder. My brother now seems to go back and forth between hating Cal’s guts and wanting to talk football with him. It’s better than just hating Cal’s guts, though.

“The good news is that I have an extra set of Tramy’s pajamas in the wash for you,” Mom continues. “Mare’s father and I have talked about it, and you can even sleep in Mare’s bed tonight. But the door had better stay open. Davidson and Carmadon are sleeping in the room next over to monitor you.”

Mom gives Cal a warning look.

At the kitchen counters, filled with all of Mom and Farley’s masterpieces, Cal and I stand in line. The scents just keep getting better, and I smile in contentment as Maven drops another cheddar biscuit onto my plate. Mom, Farley, Maven, and Thomas seem to be the lunch ladies running the show. 

“I made these myself, Mare,” Maven tells me, grinning. “I put a little arsenic in yours.”

“How kind of you, Maven,” I quip back, glad to see him. We’ve been around each other all day but haven’t had the chance to talk. I glance at Thomas. “How’s your boyfriend?”

“Cuter than yours,” Maven returns, winking at Thomas, who gives me and Cal a little wave.

“Hey,” Cal says, scowling at his brother. “I’m super cute.”

Maven shrugs. “If you say so, Cal.”

Cal holds out his paper plate to Maven, even though with the amount of gravy Mom gave him, he probably needs a new one. Maven just glances between Cal and the plate. “You don’t get one.”

My boyfriend narrows his brows. “Why not?” 

Maven looks at his brother as though he’s the dumbest guy in the world. 

“Because you haven’t given me a Christmas hug yet, Cal.”

<><><>

In the end, Kilorn just dragged the tray of pigs in a blanket into the living room. When it cooled down enough, he put it right atop his lap.

I have to go on the treadmill for at least two hours tomorrow. 

Mom and Farley are currently basking in their food’s praise. Every dish was a hit, and half of the room is currently groaning from gorging themselves on beef roast, potatoes, and pie. Maven, for one, either from the wine or the food, is about to pass out in Thomas’s arms on the couch. Bree and Tramy look onward at the TV with delirious expressions, their hands at their stomachs.

In the background, some Christmas movie that I’m not paying attention to plays. Half-finished paper plates are littered all across the room. And then there’s the tree, glowing with golden Christmas lights and tacky ornaments. Presents fall down around it, arching around the tree like a small moat.

The living room is warm and cozy in contrast to outside. The winds are whipping, drifting, and tossing hordes of snow wherever they like. The white stuff pounds down as hard as rain, turning our suburban neighborhood into more of a Christmas nightmare than a winter wonderland. Farley cusses as she watches her F-150 get swallowed by snow. It might very well be stuck tomorrow morning. The weathermen say that we’re expecting two feet of that crap.

Cal and I are back at our spot in the leather recliner by the fire. We can’t watch the movie from this angle, but neither of us particularly cares. Sitting in Cal’s lap, I lean into his chest, and his arms encircle my waist. I have my head resting against his shoulder, and the steady rise and fall of his chest makes me feel safe in an odd sort of way. He’s so warm. We have a Mets blanket on over us too.

The room watches as Kilorn takes the last turn with Secret Santa. Though it’s not a contest, either he or Cal has the best ugly sweater. Kilorn’s says “Merry Fishmas” and has a picture of a swimming fish wearing a Santa hat on it.

Julian, not so inconspicuously, leans forward with eager eyes.

Those eyes flicker a little as Kilorn rips off the wrapping paper of his present, only to find the book  _ War and Peace _ beneath it.

“That’s a classic!” Julian says, grinning ear-to-ear. “Kilorn. You might discover that you enjoy literature after you read that.”

Forcing a smile, Kilorn nods slowly. His brows wear a crease between them. “Yeah,” he says. “I bet.”

Even though the gift exchange was indeed supposed to be a secret, half of our guests have figured their Secret Santas out through bad acting or the process of elimination.

Evangeline got a Gucci purse, even though there was a fifty-dollar cap on gifts. That one was obviously from Elane. Davidson got a fifteen-dollar McDonald’s gift card, even though it’s well-known that he’s a vegetarian. That one was from Kilorn. Farley got one single kitchen blade that was supposedly made in Japan. That could’ve been from anybody.

The rest of the presents are for the morning, when there undoubtedly will be so much snow that we can’t open the doors. The good news is that there’s no way we’re running out of food anytime soon.

Also: Kilorn’s ready to put his riding snowblower to the test.

“But we have one more gift,” Bree announces from the couch. Like Maven, I can’t tell if he’s drunk or just exhausted from eating. “For you, young lady.” My brother points a lazy hand towards me.

“Me?” I point at myself. Mom already gave me two pairs of cheap flannel pants—I know it was her because I’ve been complaining to her about how I don’t have any flannel pants for the last month.

“Yes,” Tramy agrees. Less intoxicated and-or high-off-food than Bree, he forces himself off the couch and to the Christmas tree. My brother picks up one of the largest gifts at the edge of the moat and brings it over, depositing it on my lap. “It’s from your boyfriend. On an unrelated note, Bree and I have decided that we approve of Cal.”

Cal gives Tramy a smile, but he’s already turning around and heading for the couch.

I twist around so I can look Cal in the eye. He shouldn’t be giving me anything until tomorrow morning. “What did you do?” I ask, even as I rip into the mistletoe-patterned wrapping paper.

Cal shrugs. “Something.”

I find a plain brown box beneath the paper. At least two feet tall and wide, It feels heavy in my lap. I adjust the box so that most of its weight is on Cal’s legs instead of mine. His eyes glimmer, one of his corded forearms still wrapped around me as I slash into the box with a nearby pair of scissors.

And inside of that box . . . is another mistletoe wrapping paper box. The extra space is filled with what appear to be some of Julian’s books that he brought to the house. He makes a comment that he’d like them back from us.

I do it again, only to find a smaller box. Wrapping paper begins to make a moat of its own around us. Cal seems to be enjoying the show, and his hand sprawls out to cover my hip beneath our blanket.

“You’re a menace to the environment,” I hiss, finding a fourth smaller package.

Bree and Tramy, oddly, watch me tear into Cal’s gift with smiles on their faces.

“This better be the only one, Cal.”

“It is,” Cal says. “I promise.”

My eyes pierce his. “Why tonight?”

“Because Bree and Tramy might not like me tomorrow. I would’ve given it to you in private otherwise. Without the extra boxes.”

His answer doesn’t really make sense, but I open another package anyway. 

The box I hold now can fit in one hand. I rip off another layer of wrapping paper, take my scissors again to cut into the box’s tape.

“It’s not an engagement ring,” Tramy tells me drunkenly. “I learned from that mistake.”

Inside of the box rests a black sock, an odd final holding place for my gift. Odd, I mean, to anybody else. Black crew socks are our thing, contemporary dance and all. 

The genre of dance and Cal have always gone hand in hand. I started to like one, I started to like the other as well. The room looks on eagerly. My heart starts to melt, to turn into molten lava and drip all over my insides. I feel the outline of the ring inside of the sock, solid and constant and forever. 

“It’s a promise ring,” Cal tells me. “I was wondering if you’d wear it.”

It takes me a while to gather up the sense to tip the sock upside down so that the ring falls out into my palm. It’s a simple band of gold set with a ruby and diamond, and I have no doubt that it will fit my finger, maybe my right ring finger, perfectly. For some cosmic reason beyond my knowledge, the ring and its jewels remind me of me and Cal.

“I asked your dad, too,” Cal continues. “He said it was okay.”

“What, you think that if you do this in front of everyone that I’ll have to say yes?” I ask, and the rest of the room laughs. Cal does too, his laughter shaking me on his lap a little. “Because I’m not above embarrassing you like that, Cal.”

“I know you aren’t,” Cal returns, too confident in my answer to be nervous. His eyes glimmer with an emotion he’s been wearing for far longer than since we’ve been together.

I’m already his. I always was. I always want to be.

It sounds crazy and idiotic, but if he asked me to marry him today, I would.

“Of course I’ll wear it,” I tell him and waste no more time in slipping the ring upon my right ring finger. It feels right against my skin, cool and calming, a quiet presence that’s always there.

It’s a promise.

“I love you,” I tell him again, so close to him and so quietly that nobody else can hear. As though it’s a secret. 

“I love you too,” he returns, and this time, the sound of Kilorn breaking a Christmas tree doesn’t interrupt us. 

“Oh my God,” Evangeline states. The words sound like she’s surprised, but her actual tone doesn’t. “It’s a mistletoe.”

She points up, right towards the ceiling above my head.

Sure enough, some idiot or other hung a real green mistletoe by a piece of string right over the chair that Cal and I like to sit on together. Between the food and presents, I hadn’t noticed it before. It’s bound by a little red ribbon, and it looks like a piece of duct tape is holding the string to the ceiling. 

Part of me wants to slap whoever staged this, along with the environmentally-dangerous amount of wrapping paper for a present that was ultimately put in a sock, but then I’d be slapping Cal.

I blink at my boyfriend. “You’re so cheesy it’s disgusting, Cal.”

Cal loops his other arm around me. “But I like cheese. Besides. It’s bad luck for a lady to refuse a man’s kiss underneath the mistletoe.”

I narrow my eyes, deciding to be unnecessarily stubborn.

But it’s a fine evening, full of warmth and family. After what Mom and Farley cooked, I won’t be hungry for days. Gisa got her perfect Christmas, and Bree and Tramy don’t hate Cal anymore. Shade’s going to be a dad. Evangeline might actually become a welder. Even more surprisingly, Kilorn might start reading.

“Fine,” I whisper, leaning into Cal.

Mocking as ever, Cal tilts his head. “Fine.”

His lips, soft and luscious as they were the first time I tasted them, press against mine. Having had my fair share of my boyfriend’s mouth for the day, I don’t deepen the kiss, but it’s all I really need.

Farley’s new specialty apple pie greets the edges of my tongue. But not wanting to create a spectacle as I once did on a yacht, I pull away.

“You guys are my OTP,” Kilorn says, chuckling as he finishes off his pigs in a blanket. “I mean, Cal, you even fixed Mare’s bathroom pipes for her on Christmas Eve. Carmadon said so. What was wrong with them again? Well anyway, I think that was a very gentleman-thing to do. I ship it.”

Evangeline presses a hand to her mouth, but a wheeze of laughter still echoes through the house.

Carmadon pales, instantly regretting having made the joke to Kilorn.

Maven doesn’t hold back his laughter, looking at Cal like he’s a dead man.

In spite of the pounds of food I just ate, a gaping hole opens up in my stomach. Cal stills beneath me.

When I force myself to look at Bree and Tramy, they’re no longer in their semi-drunken state. 

“Calore,” Bree says, staring bullets into Cal’s forehead. “What did you do to my sister’s pipes?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And just when Bree and Tramy were starting to like Cal . . . oops. If you haven't noticed yet, I do give away a few plot developments to Calore Dance Academy in this fanfic. Did you catch them?
> 
> "Underneath the Tree" is a fantastic Christmas song by Kelly Clarkson! 
> 
> That's all! I hope everybody enjoyed it. Do share it with your friends! Happy Holidays to everybody! :) <3


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